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3 Ideas To Build Your Family Team This Christmas · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Right after Thanksgiving, there is a moment before everything gets crazy, before there's tons of stress where you can decide, like, let's actually put some intentionality. How does our family want to keep this holiday this year? And what are some things we want to add or try? And then just be an intentional family and make your Christmas tradition unique to how God's made your family. And these are just ways of stirring up those ideas.
• 0:23
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams Podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:40
  Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I got a special guest. I'm joined by Jeff Bethke. Jeff and Alyssa are jumping into the accelerator for the month of November. So you guys are listening to this probably October. You're starting to see the weather change and we're getting all psyched about Christmas. And Jeff, while we were making fun of you on last week's podcast, you tend to do Christmas a little early. Is that, are you still doing that? What's...
• 1:03
  So yeah, we've already decorated for Christmas since six months ago. So we usually stay around my birthday, which is in June. No, I'm joking. We do go early, so we're ready. Yes. Give me a little bit of why do you appreciate Christmas more than the average Christian dad? You seem like you're into it. That's a good question. I think, one, there's something...
• 1:28
  I think a couple things. One, it's the, you know, because I think that the Jewish holidays are beautiful and rich and amazing, and we talk about those a lot at family teams. But there's not a ton of ones, I would say, in kind of the Western world that at least give us a real decent shot of meaning, family rhythms, whatever, you know, like...
• 1:44
  the bunnies and the eggs and Halloween. You're like, that's not really. But Christmas does really seem like it, because it's still centered around the birth of Jesus. Even at the end of the day, everyone knows that's what it is about and what it's for. And then what I think I really like about it, if you think about it, is it's not a day, it's a season. Christmas is obviously a day. But the season has something about, and obviously I think we've done that for consumeristic reasons. We stretch the season so that people will buy more. But one added benefit from that for us is that we...
• 2:13
  get the season to then leverage for ourselves for that for longer, right? That it's three weeks, four weeks, whatever, sometimes even longer. Yeah. The holiday season, I would say at least Thanksgiving and on. But yeah, and for us, like we, I love it just from the sense of like weather changing. It really is such a good one on...
• 2:30
  The anchoring you down to actual seasons, which I think is what holidays are meant to do. Not just like meant to tie you to a particular part of the year for a particular reason. And I think the way that Christmas even deals with like light and darkness in the most darkest technically weather season of the year. Stuff like that is just like there's there's a lot of added benefits to it where it just feels like it's the easiest training wheel esque transitional period for a family team. If that makes sense. Totally. Yeah.
• 2:57
  Yeah, if you guys want, this is a great way to start to experience the depth of family. There's something about annual traditions. I used to think it was just Christmas, but then I began to realize, no, it's annual traditions. And like you said, this is the one we tend to actually do well. There's colors, there's symbols. We also commercialize it a lot, but I think that there's a lot of good stuff to draw from here. Okay.
• 3:22
  So for those of you guys jumping into the whole world of the accelerator, Jeff has written this awesome playbook. And I love what you did here with the Advent plan. So if you guys want to grab a family scripture Advent reading plan, go to familyteams.com slash Christmas. And you can get that, download that for free. It's a PDF. Yeah.
• 3:42
  Also, if you want to jump into the accelerator, Jeff and Alyssa are going to be in there for the month of November. They're going to be our community coaches. And then we're going to be back to talk to you guys at the end of November with a town hall. So we'd love for you guys to jump in there. Go to familyteams.com and check out the accelerator. But what Jeff wrote here in the playbook, gorgeous 10-page playbook that is all about how to make a meaningful Christmas. And I want Jeff just kind of give us some highlights. So the first play...
• 4:10
  is create a family tradition that lasts. So give me some thoughts about what you guys do here. Well, what I like about this one too, and this is true of all holidays, but I think Christmas again seems to be like one where we intuitively understand it and do it in small ways, but I just kind of say, hey, supercharge it.
• 4:29
  is you're gonna, is, it's multi-generational. So Christmas is, tends to be that, okay, if you got three, four generations alive, then Christmas or Christmas season, you're going to be around the generations a lot more. It's not, it's not individualistic. It's very family driven, generationally driven, not just parents and kids.
• 4:44
  And so then what you have is you have like 100 years, technically, if not longer, to build on really rich traditions, whether that's going out and, you know, we have put some examples in the playbook. I said, think about your family identity and then make traditions backwards from that. So if you're real high on service and mission, then man, like what is it? I know families that like they go volunteer to soup kitchen once every Christmas season or, you know, Christmas break when the kids are out of school or whatever, stuff like that.
• 5:09
  There can be letters that each kid writes to each other. There's something like that, you know, there's traditions around the scripture that we'll talk about that around Advent and because we really see it as the Advent season too, technically, and starting around the church calendar too. But I would say that and then you get to drop the ones that like maybe don't work like experimentally and then keep the ones that do. And so over time, you get really, really fun ones where, you know, we're only, you know, the kids are only 11. Our oldest is 11.
• 5:32
  And, you know, but there's been one we've been doing for 11 years, you know, whether it's a birthday cake for Jesus, which we make every year as a family and then sing them happy birthday, which is kind of fun and whimsical. More serious, like ones that knit the kids together is like making a little shopping tradition we have where they each shop for each other. We talk about each other. We talk about love languages, understanding one another. Like all these things are traditions that we've tried. And we're like, oh, that went really well. Stack it in there. Keep it in there. And then over time, you're like, man, this is a 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.
• 5:58
  These are really, really awesome tools that have served the family really well, if that makes sense. And so rather than again about like the consumerism side, I think think about it as what are traditions that will serve our family as glue for either rhythm or identity that I think is powerful.
• 6:14
  Yeah. Yeah. I think that's huge. Try things. And then I like that idea of like kind of tradition stacking. So basically if things are working, you know, then say, wow, let's put some, pour some cement around this, you know, have some kind of doc document or something. Hey, next year, let's re let's do this again, but let's like make sure we repeat that a lot of times.
• 6:33
  we experienced something amazing around an annual holiday. And then we're like, wow, that was really cool. And there's just sort of this nostalgia event that happened once in a lifetime. But you could actually make this something that really repeats. One of the ones you have here, Christmas Eve candlelight walk or read aloud. I like that. There's something about light in this holiday. And this is also sort of like something you're saying you can walk around your street, you can cozy up in the living room.
• 7:01
  Um, yeah. How do you think about light in, in this season? Yeah. Well, I mean, to me, that's the, so then, you know, when you get into the church calendar, you know, which I think is the liturgical calendar is like, this was actually the, the church has actually oriented itself, uh, around Christmas, Advent, whatever you want to call it. I mean, they're technically different Advents, like the, the 40 day season is, um, yeah.
• 7:23
  around this time before even like Santa and consumerism. So like that really is like the church calendar is ancient and the church calendar has started with Advent, not the new year, which I think is really interesting, by the way. And there's kind of a lot there that Janu, we start our world with like a bunch of energy January 1st. The church calendar starts with usually at first, it's always the first Sunday.
• 7:43
  usually in December. So it's like usually like, you know, December 1st, December 3rd, whatever is when Advent starts. And then you're building four to five weeks in the, over time in anticipation for basically ending Advent when Jesus comes.
• 8:00
  And so that is a really, really helpful, awesome, like road to walk. And so I think that's a good word we use for Christmas a lot or Advent in our family is like anticipation. And so we want to anticipate and like build suspense, build tension around Jesus coming and before he came that the world was really, really, really, really dark. Right. And I think the Jewish holidays do all these same things too, that you're trying to build like a emotional journey around the seven days of Sukkot, around the, you know, eight, I mean, but you know, like the week long, all these things.
• 8:29
  And so I think understanding that that's what actually Advent is trying to do is there's an emotional journey that should feel like there should be like an emotional pregnancy almost for like a better term around Advent. And when you read scripture, when you read the liturgical like calendar, when you read church fathers, it's all, it all centers around light and darkness. That's like, I think the main premise of Advent is that the world was dark until Jesus came into the world. He's the light of the world.
• 8:58
  And so then again, pressing into that, representing that in all of our five senses, whether that's candle lighting, whether that's, you know, flashlights while you're on a walk, all these different types of thing. But yeah, the easiest low hanging fruit, which I think we even say, I have a clip on the family team's Instagram that either it's this week or next week. That's that I say, Hey, one of the, don't just do this one time, but do it like every day. Just like turn the lights off sometime, light a candle and do anything. Bakes muffins or read the Bible. It's going to feel extra special. Like it's just going to feel different and fun with the lights off.
• 9:28
  with a couple candles and it's going to feel awesome. So there's something about that where I'm like, I wonder why that is too. Like, why is it, why is darkness with a candle lit? So make all of a sudden family time feel sacred. I don't know if I have the technical answer to that, but yeah, Advent is all about darkness and light. It's all about light bursting in the darkness. And so I think your job as the parents is to kind of try to shepherd, corral and create an atmosphere where that is imposing on the kid's spirit and like a really natural five cents way.
• 9:58
  Yeah, man. Yeah, this is so good for young kids because they can really see it. They can feel it. They can, like, using light, using dark, like having those kinds of traditions. Man, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. The second play you talked about, Anchor, in Scripture, the story. And like I mentioned, we've got...
• 10:17
  kind of that Advent plan that you guys can download. Tell me a little bit about it, because you've got, I love that you have these weeks kind of from the prophecy to the angels, Jesus' birth. How do you think about how can parents use Scripture strategically to really root the meaning of the Advent season?
• 10:39
  Yeah, I think there's a couple different ways, I would say. And by the way, definitely for those listening, go download that PDF reading plan. We love it. We use it. It takes basically four weeks to go through. It's kind of December 1 to December 25th. And this is separate than there is a technical, like, you know, an Anglican church calendar reading plan. That's not this. This is more like a family one, 25 days.
• 11:00
  And I think you definitely want to think about it in Old Testament and New Testament. Back to that anticipation question of like, Jesus did not show up in a vacuum. And like, where people are like, oh man, who's this guy? Like, we weren't really waiting for anyone to come. It's like the opposite, right? They were waiting for centuries, if not thousands of years for a Messiah to come.
• 11:17
  And praying into that, waiting for that. And so again, trying to get people to understand that the depth of hunger before Jesus came, of man, we need a Messiah, we need someone to save us, we need someone to come, we need someone to put the world back together, someone to put the world to rights, is deeply important. And so I think, you know, off the top of my head, I'm not looking at it right now, but yeah, I think at least the first seven days, if not the first 14, is all Old Testament readings.
• 11:41
  I'm just trying to give your kids kind of metanarrative Genesis, some Abraham, some, you know, some of the prophets. And it really, what it ends up being is like trying to look at, hey, if you didn't know Jesus was coming, what does the story say? What about, it's kind of the classic like creation, fall, redemption situation. But trying to highlight that, show that. And then the last couple of weeks is like, okay, now let's actually dig into that story. And what did Jesus do? He shows up on the scene and how did he turn the world upside down? How did he turn the light on? How did he bring light into the world? Yeah.
• 12:10
  And we made it really simple where it's kind of one thought, one question for every day. Because if you're going to try to read 25 days in a row out loud with your kids, I want it to be 10 minutes or less. It's like three or four or five minutes of me reading, one quick question, everyone answer it. Okay, we're good.
• 12:26
  And if you do that over 25 days in a row, it's actually really impactful. It doesn't have to be an hour-long discussion. And so that's kind of how we framed it because the scripture has all we need for Christmas. It has – that's what it is. It's a scripture story. It's a scripture narrative. It's a scripture hope. It's a scripture faith. So, yeah, that's –
• 12:43
  Yeah, it's a super helpful resource. Yeah. So just go to familyteams.com slash Christmas. It's got the 25 different passages, but also a question for each one. So this just really, really makes it simple. I broke it down by a week. So you have these different themes.
• 12:58
  I love that. Okay. And then you describe the importance of serving together as a family team. I know one of the things that, Jeff, you are a gift giver. Like, I love, you're one of my favorite, you understand this. I'm curious, like, how you think about this topic.
• 13:15
  Like, how does a family, what are some ways that you could help either the kids really kind of engage in that in a way that really helps them? Or, yeah, what would you say to a family that's like, hey, we want to do gift giving, but how do we make this a really meaningful thing for our family?
• 13:31
  Yeah, I think this one is interesting because it's kind of, there's obviously personality differences and changes and love languages and all that stuff with kids. And when we had really little kids, it was kind of us having to just like set the tone and go kind of buy some help, help goad them and corral them to kind of like, oh, I think, you know, talking to a four year old about another two year old. Yeah, I think they'll like this, but you just kind of set the culture. But now they're old enough where like it is really fun to try to really try to encourage and engage. You know, when if your kids are seven, eight, nine, ten, they should easily or at least have the ability to start. Yeah.
• 14:00
  Paying attention to another person, like truly seeing someone and then blessing someone. And I actually love Rollheiser's framework of blessing, actually, technically. I was just reading this the other day. He said, blessing is three things. It's truly seeing someone, like seeing them where they feel seen. And we know what that kind of is where it's like, oh, you see me for who I am and what I'm like and what I like and don't like, et cetera.
• 14:23
  Then it's speaking words over that someone. Blessing always involves words of blessing. So that's like saying how much you love them, calling things out on them, etc. And the number three is, I like how he frames this. It's like the third part of blessing is taking part of your life to give them more life. I thought that was really interesting. And so, you know, technically that can mean like taking $5 from your account, you know, something small, something big. Yeah.
• 14:44
  I love that. And I think that can be a good framework for kids. It's like, hey, are you seeing them? Are you speaking well of them? And are you taking any part of your life, quote unquote, to bless their life? And then the way that I think I always like to gamify things a little bit. And so we try to make it the way I've seen it work well with our kids to really allow them to see other people
• 15:01
  is to make it, especially in this season, is to make it feel really exciting and almost like spy level of like, hey, can we keep this a secret from them? Can we kind of work on this for the next month without them knowing and then just blow them away on December 25th and kind of like playing that camp counselor vibe a little bit, even with kids 12 and under. They're still getting very excited about that, I've noticed, even if I just frame it like that, rather than, oh, you better work really hard on a thing to give to them. It's like, well, you know...
• 15:30
  They will work really hard if you like frame it as a little bit more like fun, secret surprise situation. And so it's maybe even the parents saying, hey, how can we best surprise this sibling this year? How can, what do you think they would open on December 25th that might just like blow their mind? Like, is it asking some friends something? Is it this and like studying them? And, you know, Alyssa's actually really good at that too with, she's just, she's buying things where you're like, oh, I never even said I wanted that, but man, you know me better than I know myself.
• 15:59
  So I think, yeah, just trying to build it into the culture by seeing people, studying people, remembering and kind of treating it almost like a game helps with the kids for sure. And obviously this extends beyond just Christmas, but this is the easiest way to like get them kind of flexing that muscle. Yeah, that's so good.
• 16:14
  Yeah, there's kind of this moment that I saw happen with our kids where they got more excited about handing out their gifts than about the presents that they were receiving. Yeah. That flip in a family or in a child's life is so significant. Yeah.
• 16:31
  Yeah. Yeah. Kind of almost like who can give the best gift. It's almost a competition of who can give the best gift, which is fun. Yeah. That's what, yeah. Paul says that, you know, how to do one another in showing honor. Like it's, it's the one area we really compete in, you know, as Christians. Okay.
• 16:46
  So, yeah, I think it's really important that you create a kind of a gift-giving culture that really emphasizes and promotes and celebrates the gifts, like the thoughtfulness, the givers, and not just the receivers. Because it's always amazing to receive gifts. But, man, it's incredible to watch your kids, like their character go deep and their relationship with each other get deeper. Because, wow, I feel really seen by that gift. Yeah.
• 17:15
  That's awesome. Okay. And the last one is, you know, there, there are different roles that we could give to our kids. I really thought this was creative, you know, whether it's like the caroler. So somebody who's really in charge of music, the baker, the giver, the storyteller, like decorations. Yeah. Talk to me about a little bit, like what, when a parent is, sometimes we just would do everything, right? We're just like, okay, this is, you know, put the kids aside and we just go for it. But yeah. What, what were you driving at with, with kind of giving special responsibilities to kids?
• 17:44
  Yeah, this is a fun idea I had where it's like trying to activate kids' strengths. Because again, I think families, when all the strengths are kind of being inflamed in a good way or activated in a good way and then serving the family and then even outside of that serving others, it's really, really fun. And so I think, man, sit your kids down right after Thanksgiving or something and just be like, hey.
• 18:02
  Can we think of like a role for each one of us this season where once a week, once a day or whatever the role is, how significant it is, you're just, you're the one on duty. So if you're the, you know, cause again, like I know there's one kid in our family that will love to be the baker and no one else will volunteer for that and she'll want to do it.
• 18:20
  And then you just kind of like, okay, what do we think is reasonable? One, you got to bake one thing once a week, every other, like, you know, all these things. How do we get set up for that? Like, and then all of a sudden it just comes, becomes a little gamey. It becomes certainly more purposeful.
• 18:33
  and kind of gives them something to do in the season. And especially with kids off school, you're also off of school for like two and a half weeks. So this also gives some like really fun ways to do that. And again, it just gives them purpose. And so storyteller, same thing. Hey, your job is to pick the story or to pick the, and again, all this is dependent on ages, but there's also kids that like really having, like helping Alyssa decorate the house. And so, okay, put your own touches on the house. What does that mean? That's probably just one really big day thing that, you know, that one or two days when we decorate.
• 19:02
  in the holiday season. So all those things, I could have put more, I think I just put five to get people started. But I mean, I was like, I thought that was a fun idea where it's like, man, let's, let's think of go around and then let the kids speak into that. Hey, if you could take three roles for this season, whatever, what would that be? What would you want to do? And I think that's a really fun way to be like, well, okay, you know, a weekend, you're the, you're the baker, you're the decorator. So that's your job or that's you. And they would happily hop in. And so I think that's kind of a fun way to think of it.
• 19:25
  Yeah. That seems like the essence of being a team, you will, you'd feel it like, wow, I know that because my sister or my brother is really into baking or really into music or what I'm getting to experience their strength, their gift in this very, very practical way. Um, exactly. That is fun. I love that idea. Like,
• 19:44
  And I think that part of what we're trying to do is say like right after Thanksgiving, there is a moment before everything gets crazy, before there's tons of stress where you can kind of decide like, let's actually put some intentionality. How does our family want to keep this holiday this year?
• 20:01
  And, um, and what are some things we want to add or try? Um, and then just be, be an intentional family and make your Christmas tradition unique to how God's made your family, your, and these are just, you know, ways of like stirring up those ideas, but that's what we're looking for. I think that's really important for us to figure out.
• 20:19
  Yeah, I agree. And even like, well, to your point, yeah, it's very, you should absolutely have like a holiday season meeting with your family. And this can be part of your weekly family meeting. That's like 15 minutes. But it's just starting to kind of get, hey, we want a lot, we want to make this intentional. And you can, especially again, with kids, you can kind of even really push back against the traditional narratives. Hey, guys, this is a time where a lot of people care about themselves. This is a time where a lot of people just buy a bunch of stuff. This is a time where a lot of people go broke, you know, all these things.
• 20:44
  How do we make sure we don't do that? You guys got any ideas? What can it look like? Blah, blah, blah. But then fun. It's a really easy way to teach also to that. Hey, we're going to be kind of antithetical to that by jumping into that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's going to take it's going to take a little intentionality to push back on some of those things that are. But there's so much to work with as well. So awesome. Well, super helpful, guys. So again, if you want to grab that download, go to family teams at com slash Christmas.
• 21:07
  If you want to join us for a whole month of the Accelerator, the entire month of November is going to be all about Christmas, how to make this meaningful, how to prepare for that meeting coming up. So we do the week one is the playbook we've been referencing. So this is these four different plays that Jeff's written about how to do Christmas meaningfully as a family.
• 21:25
  then there's going to be a coaching call that the Betheskis will be on to help you guys answer questions like brainstorm. And part of it is we want to get you guys into the accelerator to start sharing your ideas with us. I can't wait to see in the Slack channel where everybody jumps in for people start to share ideas. And I think it's gonna be super valuable. Then April and I are going to share a little bit about our favorite traditions, and then we'll do the town hall meeting at the end of November. But that
• 21:49
  That is a, that's a typical month in the accelerator, but this is going to be super special for November because you're going to be so ahead of the game when it comes to Christmas. If you jump in there with us and go through this. So awesome. Cool. Any, any last words there, Jeff, before we let everybody go? No, I'm excited to, yeah, I would definitely encourage everyone to jump in, get in there because we're going to really workshop it out and have a blast on some of the calls and Q&As. And it's just, I think, a really, really, really fun way to level up your family team. So I'm excited. Awesome. See you guys in there.
• 22:18
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.